Great Winston-Salem Journal front-pager by Richard Craver on hospitals’ public relations campaign for survival:
Stung by a series of unusual setbacks at the General Assembly, the North Carolina hospital industry is launching a public relations campaign aimed, in part, at protecting revenues and staving off competition from lower cost surgery centers.
In a social media initiative targeted at lawmakers and their constituents, the N.C. Hospital Association says hospitals are “fighting for their economic survival.”
Obamacare isn’t helping, either. I just read Nick J. Tate’s Obamacare Survival Guide. Yeah you hear Dick Morris pitching it on conservative talk radio and how he warned us about Obamacare, but honestly Tate gives it a fair shake, and ‘bundled payments’ to hospitals is a perfect example.
Tate acknowledges that the pilot program where bundled payments from the federal government to hospitals has the admirable goal of reducing the number of costly stays and readmissions by allowing hospitals flexibility in spending on outpatient care.
But it’s not fee for service, and there are always surprises in treatment along the way. My guess is hospitals aren’t counting bundled payments as a boon.
Bonus observation: Note also hospitals’ opposition to HB 177 which would open up the certificate of need process to physician-owned hospitals.
Hospitals indeed want all the newly-insured under Obamacare as patients, but odds are it will be way more than they bargained. Common sense dictates that an increase in insured patients should equal more hospitals, right?
